Do You Have Criminal Genes?

As I was listending to all the recent news about mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, I felt both a personal, and a professional, connection. For years, I’ve shown my psychology classes the FBI’s “most wanted” poster for Bulger, which lists eighteen counts of murder, racketeering, money laundering, and extortion. What makes Whitey’s case so interesting is the stark contrast between him and his brother William, who also got famous, but for very different reasons. While Jimmy was breaking rocks in Alcatraz, Billy was slaving over the books at Boston University. Besides becoming president of the state Senate, Billy went on to some success in the academic world, earning a post as president of the prestigious University of Massachusetts.

Whitey Bulger

I can relate to the Bulger family. I also grew up poor in a shantytown Irish family, and I also had a brother James. And while I was studying for my Ph.D., my brother James was doing time in Sing Sing.

Bulger’s family, and mine, provide some perspective on the evidence suggesting “criminal genes.” The same families who produce antisocial criminals can also produce bookish academic nerds, and it might even be that the same genetic proclivities can help two brothers “succeed” in both endeavors.

Terri Moffitt is a professor at Duke University and University College, London, who studies the factors leading some children to turn into life-long criminal offenders. Whitey Bulger fits the prototype: As a teenager, he was a vicious fighter, and had already been arrested several times; in the military, he spent time in the brig; in his twenties, he turned to robbing banks; as a middle-aged man, he became a murderous mobster. Professor Moffitt notes that over 100 different studies have examined genetic influences on criminality, and from these she concludes “that genes influence 40 to 50% of population variance in antisocial behavior.”

Genes influence eye color in a very direct way, before you are born. But any genes involved in criminal behavior unfold in complex interactions with our environments. As Moffitt observes: “Crime is not inherited. So what is?” Researchers have suggested some candidates: the inclinations to seek out excitement, to be fearless, to have problems controlling your impulses, or to be insensitive to other people’s pain, for example. Genes influencing behavior need not produce complicated brain mechanisms; they can operate in much simpler indirect ways. The tendency to grow tall is heritable, and dramatically changes your odds of becoming a professional basketball player. The tendency to grow muscular is also heritable, and changes the odds that you will enjoy getting into fights.

Is it necessarily “bad genes” that lead to criminal behavior? When researchers look for the causes of problem behaviors, they have traditionally thought in terms of a medical model – leading them to search for something diseased, or malfunctioning, in the system. Poor impulse control, intellectual deficiencies, or insufficient empathy seem to fit that model. But University of Arizona psychologists Bruce Ellis and A.J. Figueredo have begun looking at antisocial behavior through an evolutionary lens, and suggesting that some traits involved in criminal behavior might have an adaptive side. Evolutionary biologists view any animal’s traits in terms of “trade-offs.” In the natural world, nothing comes for free: The same bright colorful feathers that attract mates also attract predators. The same aggressive tendency can help an animal defend its territory, but also increase its chances of getting seriously injured.

Might the very same tendencies inspire some young men to antisocial behavior and others to academic success? Consider the simple case of testosterone levels. Psychologists Jim Dabbs and Robin Morris examined the criminal records for 4,462 men whose testosterone levels were measured in the army. High testosterone levels were strongly associated with later antisocial behavior, but only for fellows from underprivileged backgrounds. Other research suggests that high testosterone levels trigger not violence, per se, but a motivation to compete for status. Violence is one way to rise in the social hierarchy, but it is a costly and dangerous one. If you are a rich kid, you can compete on the tennis court or the stock market. If you are doing well in school, like me or Billy Bulger, you can hit the books, and get into graduate school as a pathway to a professional career. But if you are a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who has already blown his chances in school, like our two brothers, then becoming an outlaw may become a more attractive career option.

You start with someone that has the STP traits in their Myers-Briggs personality profile. That is Sensing, Thinking, and Perceiving.

A huge majority of criminals in prison have these traits. But not all STP's are criminals. So there is some other element besides personality type that triggers the deviant behavior.

I lean towards environmental conditions as the trigger. As mentioned in this article, poverty can have a role in behavior. I also think that the friends and associates of the person play a huge part too.

Current scientific opinion is that it takes both a genetic vulnerability or sensitivity, PLUS an invalidating environment to produce any of a number of mental disorders.

I personally think that the genetic hand of cards we are dealt at conception has the greater influence on how each individual turns out. And, the exact same mechanism is in place that results in the unfortunate occurrence of physical disorders.

For example, there are couples who produce several offspring, and all of the offspring are just fine, both mentally and physically healthy except for the one unfortunate sibling of the group who was born with Tay-Sach's disorder (or some other rare, inherited disorder) due to an unlucky spin on the double genetic roulette wheel. If I understand what I've read correctly, the specific traits that in combination result in psychopathy: the absence of affective empathy, the need for excitement/stimulation, the absence of normal fear, and compulsive lying... are mostly genetically determined.

The inborn temperament traits of a child, the inborn genetic gifts or vulnerabilities (such as intellectual capacity) combined with either adequate parenting or substandard, abusive, negligent, exploitative aka entirely inadequate parenting, determine how mentally healthy and functional the child will turn out to be.

For me, the proof of this is that there are individuals who have truly ghastly, horrifically abusive childhoods who nevertheless survive and go on to lead joyful, productive adult lives. AND there are individuals who experienced relatively ordinary, relatively stable, mentally healthy parenting and relatively normal, ordinary experiences during their formative years who nevertheless grow up to be hard-core criminals or serial killers.

So I personally think that the inborn genetic deck of cards we are dealt is more influential in how we turn out than the environment, generally speaking.

Of course there are always exceptions.

The offspring of long-term kidnap victims/imprisoned sex-slaves have a ghastly double-whammy to overcome: negative genetic influences from an obviously severely mentally ill father, PLUS being raised as a prisoner by their insane father and their captive mother.

I hope that the innate resilience of these unfortunate children is very high, and I hope that their new, more normalized environments will help them recover from the incredibly, nightmarishly horrific first years of their lives so they can grow up to be joyful, mentally healthy adults.

This is the "biologically rough-hewn, environmentally finished" model. This article implies that specific traits aren't heritable, merely broad "tendencies" or proclivities that are then fully sculpted by the environment.

Thats's actually rubbish.

Sorry, biology and trait expression don't work that way. Highly specific behavioral traits are heritable. Read about the myriad of shared idiosyncrasies between identical twins (including those reared apart) for an idea about this.

That both genes and environment are involved in crafting traits doesn't mean that one "finalizes" the other. Rather both interact together in important ways – often fairly "deterministic" ways – to give us the traits we see.

A commenter over at my blog was guilty of committing this erroneous reasoning, whom I corrected.

Perhaps the author ought to consider that people in the same family have different (albiet, similar) genes, so what sets one apart from the other could just as easily have something to do with those genetic differences.

I'm all for spreading awareness of the importance of genes (indeed, that's why I have a blog), but spreading this kind of misinformation about how they work doesn't further that goal.

See:

All Human Behavioral Traits are Heritable | JayMan's Blog

While you're at it, read about me, since the above post is the "gateway" post to my blog: